This invention relates to telephony management systems and more particularly, to a method of allocating agents to at least one telephone call campaign based on agent productivity.
Many business and customer service organizations utilize automated call distribution systems, which route incoming calls to operators or agents in one or more various departments. Such systems efficiently screen incoming calls and are capable of providing initial, preliminary information to the customer by automated voice in response to system prompts. As a need for an agent occurs, the inbound telephone system distributes the incoming call to an agent based on agent availability.
Additionally, credit collection agencies, telemarketers and other types of business utilize outbound automated dialing systems to efficiently reach customers by automatically dialing telephone numbers contained within a pre-selected group of call records. Upon detecting a voice, the automated dialing system connects the call to an agent, typically based on agent availability. However, if agents receive incoming or outbound calls without consideration of their capabilities or experience, many instances are presented where assigned agents are incapable of servicing a call. Placing such a call on hold while a more suitable agent is located is time consuming and cost inefficient, resulting in lost or abandoned calls.
In an attempt to direct specific incoming calls to pre-selected agents, prior art systems utilize agent splits or hunt groups. These systems require incoming call campaigns to be pre-set such that specific calls are directed to pre-selected agents. However, these system are limited in that agents are not selected dynamically as the call campaign is active based on agent attributes. Rather, agents are bound to an incoming call campaign prior to activation of the call campaign.
More sophisticated prior are systems and methods, such as the system and method disclosed in commonly-owned U.S. Pat. No. 5,592,543, which is incorporated herein by reference, provide systems and methods for allocating agents to telephone call campaigns by a telephony system for servicing call records contained in call campaigns. Such systems allocate agent resources to service telephone call campaigns based on agent experience and expertise, and not solely on first availability. While such systems take into account the fact that certain agents possess higher proficiency for certain tasks, they do not account for dynamic proficiency changes, which may be based in whole or in part on specific attributes of a campaign or dynamically changing agent attributes.
For example, everyone has good days and bad days, including call center agents. In addition, depending on the nature of the current call campaign, such as a product being sold, etc., certain agents are going to be able to succeed on a higher percentage of calls than they normally do. Likewise, on other days, or other campaigns, some agents will not succeed much at all.
Accordingly, what is needed is a productivity-based method of agent resource allocation, which is aimed at identifying those agents who, for whatever reason, are doing well at a particular point in time with respect to a particular call campaign and which will automatically give those higher-producing agents preference when assigning calls. In this manner, a call center could increase the number of successful calls that are handled in a particular time period.
Such a method would also be advantageous to call center agents themselves who are paid commissions upon the completion of successful calls, since call center agents who are performing well are rewarded by receiving the opportunity to be increasingly successful. In addition, with respect to overall call center efficiency, such a method would account for agents who are not overly successful during a particular time period by reallocating the priority calls to those agents who are enjoying a higher success rate.
In accordance with the present invention, a method for allocating agents to at least one telephone call campaign by a telephony system is provided for servicing call records contained within the telephone call campaign(s). The method is aimed at maximizing productivity of successful agents by prioritizing call distribution to those agents enjoying a high level of success with respect to a particular call campaign during a particular period of time.
The method begins by providing a plurality of agent resources to participate in at least one call campaign to be managed by a telephony system. Then a call center supervisor or other person responsible for the success of a particular call campaign establishes success criteria for each call campaign to be managed by the telephony system.
A success index is assigned to each agent participating in the call campaigns managed by the telephony system. A particular agent will have a separate success index assigned to him or her for each call campaign in which that agent participates.
Next, during the processing of each call campaign, calls are directed to the plurality of agent resources in a prioritized manner, whereby calls are connected to an available agent having a high success index before they are connected to agents having lower success indexes. Each agent""s success index is updated dynamically based on the established success criteria while the call campaign is in progress. Thus, agents satisfying the established success criteria will receive high success indexes, which will result in those agents receiving more calls. In addition, since the updating step occurs dynamically, as particular agents become increasingly or decreasingly successful, the system will reallocate the prioritization of calls thus, taking advantage of those immediately successful agents.
The system and method includes various strategies for selecting agent priority increases. For example, agents who exceed a threshold number of success events during an established time period will receive a higher agent success index. In the alternative, those agents who record the highest relative number of success events in an established time period may be assigned high agent success indexes. Of course, since agent priorities will be based on success indexes related to current performance, agent success indexes may decrease as different agents become increasingly successful beyond the success levels achieved by previously successful agents.
Thus, since calls will be directed to those agents who are experiencing a high degree of current success, the overall efficiency and productivity of the call center in general will be enhanced.